Sobriety

I cannot decide what is more difficult to manage, the average price of a meal or the rate in which I order them. This is the second time in a month that I have had close to 0.00$ in my bank account. I ponder the lives of the homeless people I walk by and I do not see much of a difference between myself and their sun parched brows. Only time divides us. If I was to be broke for long enough I would inevitably dwindle into their leathery diseased forms. I can feel the elephantiasis crawling under my skin waiting for a good reason to surface.

After these macabre images of my body becoming crippled fall into the background noise of screeching brakes and hungry crows, I begin to realize this is the price of sobriety. A day without a drink, after days of drinking, is often the most obscure, waning moment in a given person’s life. Unless you’re one of the dullards who have never had a drop of alcohol, and have somehow convinced yourself that shoots and ladders are more fun than pounding manhattans back in a loud bar full of beautiful women, then you have no idea what I’m talking about, and have lived a relatively carefree, boring life of moderate joy. For anyone else that has some relation to my current sitting, clear headed, ambiguous desires to achieve something; or at the very least do something of value, you know all too well what the pangs of sobriety can bring you. More often it falls on a Monday, the day after the days of post-adolescent, pre-adult, mid- anal retentave debauchery where we dressed nice, laughed a bit, then fell, most vigorously, into a bed either alone, or with a busy minded 20 something that drinks like they have Alzheimer’s and forget what its like to be drunk all the time.

You know what I’m talking about.

These are the existential pauses in our lives that we can either drown in, or be enlightened by. I can’t speak for people crammed in an office today, or those patiently rocking back and forth in their executive suites, but I can speak for those of us on the couch, the unemployed ambitious, unknown innovators of the common occurrence. There are dozens of us spread across language barriers and in crux’s of cityscapes, hovered over a drafting table surrounded by crumpled pieces of paper and lost articles of clothing.

In these moments of uncertainty we are most free, for it becomes a matter of choice as to where our day will take us. If we only find the will to put into action all the calamity of our hearts we would build great things out of dust, and craft diamonds out of lead pencils. I think I need a coffee.